So I bought BioShock 2 on release for the PS3 and I finished it last night. Overall I thought it was a very good game. Maybe not up to the level of the first one, but still a very enjoyable experience. Here are my thoughts :

Before buying the game, I was scared to see how playing as a Big Daddy for the whole game would turn out. I thought the Big Daddy part in the first Bioshock was fun, but only for the first few minutes or so. After you felt really heavy and not too comfortable in your shoes. I guess I was wrong because the movement even though you are in a big daddy suit feels smooth and as if you were 'a normal guy'.

The level design felt 'okay' leaning towards 'good'. This whole retro 50 style always appeal to my eyes (I enjoy Fallout, Bioshock, etc) but to me it seems that it did not have that same shiny look the first one had. The Arcadia level comes to mind, man that was a beautiful level. I loved those parts underwater and I really wish a whole level would take place underwater. Don't know how to pull it off though so i'll leave your imagination to it. I had fun checking out every room and every corner for every little bit of extra goodies though.

The weapons stayed true to the original... in some way. One of my cons was that some of the later game weapons did not serve me any use. I did not use the harpoon gun at all. I only used the frag grenades in my grenade launcher and don't get me started on the drill.. useless except for the first few levels. I really forced myself to use the tonics that increase its efficiency but I really couldn't get myself used to it. I pretty much kept using the machine gun and the shotgun for the whole game. Used the Rivet gun for a little while just to plant some traps on splicers and watch them blow.. that was fun for a while. One thing to note, using your plasmids along with your weapon is a major plus! The ability to now film your enemies instead of simply taking a picture is a very good addition. Can't say anything wrong about that. One last thing in the 'weapons' section is the hacking tool... not much to say except it was a very nice upgrade from the first one although it did make the game a bit easier than the first one. I did not get caught by a single camera for the whole game.

The story was okay. It did not have as much twists and did not feel as strong as the first one but it held onto it until the end. I really wish we could've seen more of Tenenbaum though since she was a major character in the first one. The game really makes you hate/love characters. I felt bad for killing Sinclair in the end because he was a good buddy and I really hated Lamb for the whole game. I got the good ending where Eleanor and all the little sisters are on the boat and they drop your teddy bear in the sea after you die... this was very emotional and I had tears to my eyes.

Pros
Using your plasmids along with your weapons
The audio tapes.. never gets old
The new camera that allows you to film your enemies instead of simply taking pictures
The big sister fights
The last plasmid
Solid play time. Took me ~ 20 hours to complete on Normal
The exploration aspect of the game
The whole retro 50's style.
The good ending.. oh my that was sad.

Cons

Some weapons are just .. 'lame'
Level design is not as good as the first one. Does not feel as shiny.
Gets too easy towards the end
Harvesting ADAM with the little sisters is fun at first.. but gets old real quick and is very repetitive
Security cameras and bots are absolutely not a threat anymore.

My score : 8/10. Overall a very good game. Recommend it to everyone although id probably suggest you play the first one before. I did not try the multiplayer enough to give it a solid review. Sorry.

Please discuss. Im open to criticism, this is just my view on the game and if you think otherwise please let me know! :)

nhcarpenter

03-09-2010, 11:46 AM

Both the game and your little review are both well done. Being new to the forum I'd like to thank you for a strait forward, no whinning assesment of the game.

Over all I agree with you, although I thought the "less shiny" graphical approach made the whole thing look smoother and more real (once I got used to it). The storyline may not have as many twists and turns but really I'm just there to save little girls and kill mutants. Abundantly entertaining- to sum it up in two words.

Love the double fisted (weapon/plasmid) combat approach. And whole heartedly agree that the drill is useless, but I'm sure there are those who preffer hand to hand and it's nice to have the option. Personnally I rode the rivit gun hard, reverted to the machine gun when engaged against larger groups, & kept the shotgun for close quarters and room clearing.

I pre-ordered the game and have been sittnig on it till now, waiting for some uninterupted game time. Glad I did, once the disbeliefe is suspended this game just flows. Sank a whole day into it and then looked up (wow-it's dark out).

The only problems where minor. Once or twice the camera didn't revert back to the weapon automatically. And rebound keys aren't labeled as such in the game. Very minor stuff.

I give it an easy 9/10, and hope anyone having difficulties (I know its frustrating) gets them sorted out and can enjoy this one! BF - over

Forward Area

03-09-2010, 11:56 AM

Both the game and your little review are both well done. Being new to the forum I'd like to thank you for a strait forward, no whinning assesment of the game.

Thank you for the reply. Ill be honest here, this is the first review I ever put out for a game and it might look a bit weird to those who regularly check reviews. I plan on doing more though.

Over all I agree with you, although I thought the "less shiny" graphical approach made the whole thing look smoother and more real (once I got used to it). The storyline may not have as many twists and turns but really I'm just there to save little girls and kill mutants. Abundantly entertaining- to sum it up in two words.

Although I enjoy shinier environments, I think this one helps set the mood of a 'darker' game. It is by no means any bad, but I personally like shiny games so of course the darker setting will not appeal to me as much. :)

Love the double fisted (weapon/plasmid) combat approach. And whole heartedly agree that the drill is useless, but I'm sure there are those who preffer hand to hand and it's nice to have the option. Personnally I rode the rivit gun hard, reverted to the machine gun when engaged against larger groups, & kept the shotgun for close quarters and room clearing.

Pretty much my thoughts.

The only problems where minor. Once or twice the camera didn't revert back to the weapon automatically. And rebound keys aren't labeled as such in the game. Very minor stuff.

I don't recall any issues either. Maybe minor ones but I did not pay attention to those.

Thanks for the reply, always appreciated. Here ill give you some reputation since you are new around..

Yeah the drill is awsome , i mainly used the drill , rivet and the harpoon all the time .

arizonachris

03-09-2010, 05:56 PM

Nice review, Forward. Pretty much sum up the game. Altho, I guess because I loved the first so much, I would give Bioshock 2 a 9/10.

Once I got the Winter Blast 3, I pretty much used it, the machine gun, the shot gun, the rivet gun, and the harpoon. Like others said, at that point, you are God. Throw down some mini turrets, put up some trip rivets or tripwire harpoons, and harvesting a dead body is quick and clean.

I actually enjoyed the hacking aspects. There was nothing more fun that to hack a camera, then to hack the little security bots. Those things cracked me up in the original game and they still do, with their crazy noises. Later on you can upgrade and get to repair them, and then all of a sudden, they have names! Funny stuff.

Blue Lightning

03-09-2010, 08:40 PM

Nice double post you got there arizonachris :rolleyes:.

I would agree Forward that the hacking game is funner but gets too easy. I would of made it harder, with all red and white except 1 single green strip for hacking safes later on. That would of been hard!

To really increase difficulty and level time, simply go after all BD's in the level. Youll be there for hours.

I agree with you on the fun gameplay apects. But the drill dash is what makes this game...you gotta try drilldash.

I think it is more shiney than the first one in a way...many more posters to look at, the underwater parts...beautifuly done levels like Siren Alley and Paupers Drop really gave it atmosphere. I heard that Siren Alley and Paupers Drop was one level called Siren Alley, but it was so big they split it in two.

Anyway, I agree with many of your points Forward, and its a good assesment of B2. ALthough I will score it higher, Your score of 8/10 is fair.

arizonachris

03-10-2010, 12:44 AM

Nice double post you got there arizonachris :rolleyes:.

Oops, when I posted that for whatever reason the Forum wasn't responding. Fixed. ;)

crazyredsoxfan1

03-10-2010, 10:57 PM

The multiplayer is pretty fun, it has its own thing, very unique

Forward Area

03-11-2010, 05:17 AM

Yes im playing it at the moment.. not bad! Level 18 now.. ill probably get to level 40 and stop though but its fun for a little while.

cutthroat

03-11-2010, 12:29 PM

Decent review. I agree, the movement in the Big Daddy suit was done well enough. You make stomping noises when walking and groans when you're smashing stuff, and move quick enough to dodge being shot at. If you were slow and lumbering, people would find a way to complain about that.

Sinclair was a good ally for the first half of the game. The way he said "Holy Moses!" after you fight the first Big Sister made me laugh, and I say it to myself now and then as an exclamation.
Also, I really hated Dr. Lamb too. She helped the story along with her "revival of Rapture" thing and the creation of "The Family", but every time she would come on over the radio I cringed while she dryly gave some boring psychology lecture in a smug English 'know-it-all' accent that made me want to drop my current objective and go drill a hole in her face. Maybe that's what they were going for.

The exploration of a ruined retro 50's style city is fun and the audio tapes are always interesting. And the good ending is pretty sad, but the bad endings are confusing. I had to go on youtube to watch them all to make sure I wasn't getting gypped, because I harvested one little sister and saved the rest...

Jhereg

07-23-2011, 05:19 AM

I'll be the very first to admit that I bought BioShock II because I was bored stupid. Sorry, but I'd read the reviews and watched the trailers for both I and II and was utterly, 100% unimpressed. Frankly, it seemed like a dumb game. Basically the only reason I bought BioShock II was simply because it had a II. I figured if the game was a complete waste of time, it would have never survived having a I. If it was good enough to warrant putting the time and money into a sequel, that by itself suggests there is something going for it.

OK, so now I've 'fessed up. Trust me, this is not the first time that I've completely misjudged a game based on the trailer. I've even got a couple of games that never survived the first play-through because even though the trailer was good, the game sucked. It would be nice if trailers were a useful way to judge a game, but generally they're not. That's life. Now I'm thinking of popping for BioShock I, as well.

I could wax eloquent about the graphics, but I'm not a movie critic. If the graphics are playable, I'm good. They're appropriate to the theme. Close enough. If I want fabulous graphics, I'll buy a movie, thanks. I'm after a game, so for me the thing lives or dies not on glitz, but on how engaging the game is.

As shooters go, BioShock II is the best one I've seen in a *very* long time. I'm heading into my fourth consecutive play-through after I write this. After three times through, I'm still experimenting with builds. There are lots of different ways to build your character and thus far I haven't found one that is overwhelmingly good - or bad.

You must inevitably tune your character toward specific strengths, but none of them get so overwhelmingly powerful that all of your other capabilities become summarily useless by comparison. "Drill specialist" is something of an exception there, but you can switch in and out of that mode even in combat - and I've had occasion to do so. So it's beautiful :)

What really impresses me, I think, are the strategic/tactical possibilities. Pretty much everything is open-field combat, so none of them are shoved down your throat, but the game provides the *means* - and leaves you to your devices. I see new possibilities all the time that I've missed before.

With a lot of shooters, that's the thing that generally puts me off. A boss fight where your ability to pass the boss depends on discovering, by trial and error, precisely the one set-up that the game designer determined in advance to be the One True Way to take down that boss.

So you just keep getting killed until you figure it out, or fight like a madman for ten minutes until you stumble across the trick or hook or dodge that will allow you to finally set up the kill. Once you've figured it out the first time, that fight is a gimme from then on. That's not a boss fight. That's a Stupid Jumping Puzzle disguised as a boss fight. I hate Stupid Jumping Puzzles.

BioShock II is a lot less deterministic. You can just 'Rambo Up' and wade in killing everything as best you can - if you like. Or you can pay attention, use your ears, and play smart - if you like. There is no One True Way. Your success doesn't depend on your ability to read the game designer's mind - it depends only on how good you are and how creative you can be with the things at hand.

Even in the cases where you get 'jumped' - that is, you are effectively ambushed - you generally have a couple of seconds that you can use to prepare for the incoming fight. If you're aware and quick, you can even the odds considerably before the bullets start flying.

That is what makes the game so re-playable for me. Even the simplest encounters can be handled in a myriad of ways. Its always fresh. There is always a challenge. There is always something you've missed, or just haven't tried yet.

Do I have any gripes? Oh, yes. It wouldn't be a proper article if I didn't have one. And I have precisely one.

My plasmids keep changing their key-bindings. Perhaps that's just something that I haven't figured out yet. It would be nice, though, if the little pop-up bars that indicate the plasmid and weapon-bindings could be flagged to stay up - to make it easier to figure out where the damn ice plasmid is *now*, or where the inferno plasmid is *now* - instead of having to flip through them while watching your left hand.

That would be nice. But as gripes go, that's not much. I give this one a fat 9 on a scale of 10. It loses 1/2 point for dribbling spaghetti sauce, but on the whole, a very respectable score :D

Solarmech

07-23-2011, 07:31 AM

Wish you would have playee BS1 before BS2. The intoduction to Rapture is a great thing about the game. sm

Yup thats what i do, been playing the whole game like this .. since Winter blast 1. Game becomes really easy.

Jhereg

07-24-2011, 09:19 AM

Until the part where you have to break open the two pipes above the docking bay - then you're not so much a god as a guy wishing for wings :D

While I like that combo for Big Daddies, Alphas and the like, for regular stuff I find it kind of restrictive. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't much care for Leadheads spraying bullets at me while I'm waiting for them to burn to death, or get stung to death, or die of icicle poisoning, especially if I happen to be guarding a Little Sister at the time :)

Winter Blast + Drill + Icy Drill works just fine - even without Drill Specialist, and you get to use your ranged weapons, too. Its a question of style, I'll grant you. But I tried it and while it's utility is far beyond question, it's not quite the god-mode you make it out to be :)

Jhereg

07-24-2011, 09:21 AM

Wish you would have playee BS1 before BS2. The intoduction to Rapture is a great thing about the game. sm

Downloading that as I type. Looking forward to it :)

cOLDer than OLD

07-31-2011, 08:12 PM

I agree with that, but I'd take another point off because of how it was a console port. I don't want to have to deal with Games for Windows LIVE, low FOV, not opening the door for mods, paid DLC with gamer points nonetheless, etc... but I was able to put that aside and enjoy the game, but no one plays the Multiplayer and the lack of mod support pretty much kills replay-ability, I mean I'll play it again sometime probably but not to the level of Deus Ex. I thought the first one was much better localized, even if it didn't really support mods either.

I don't like 2K as a developer, they know how to make a good game but that's about it.